Robot named da Vinci draws them in

Sharp Chula Vista makes surgical device available so young visitors can learn

“It is amazing that in a day’s time interviewing this grandfather, we all got together and drew pictures and all the details,” Perez said. “All the technology is available now. You could patent it.”

Perez reached out to Sharp Chula Vista last year for a robotics event. The hospital did its first robotics surgery, a prostatectomy, in 2010, and has done nearly 600 procedures since.

Daniel Cuellar, manager of surgical services at Sharp Chula Vista, was one of the hospital volunteers interacting with kids during the recent Robotics Day. He said elementary school-age children are absolutely old enough to be engaged in this kind of learning.

“You can see a spark in some of them,” Cuellar said. “I had one kid in my last group who was glued to everything I was saying.”

Alejandro Perez, 12, now a seventh grader at Eastlake Middle School, joined the Smart Mind club when he was at Liberty Elementary. He is fairly certain he doesn’t want to be a robotic surgeon, but he knew he was forever hooked on robots from the first time he saw Asimo, Honda’s advanced humanoid robot, at Disneyland.

“I was very interested that you could build things that work by themselves,” Alejandro said.

“You just program them and then they don’t need human control.”

Attending Robotics Day, Eastlake Elementary Principal Eric Banatao said he, too, was learning things he didn’t know. About 30 kids at his school are Smart Mind club members.

“When you think about robotics, it’s part of our military, it’s part of manufacturing, it’s part of the medical field, so it’s revolutionizing the way we do things and that’s an important aspect for us to consider,” said Banatao. “If you think about these machines being named da Vinci, these kids are definitely those inventors who are problem solving and finding ways to fix things and help us as human beings. It’s incredible.”